The Shadow of Light
by WaywardChi1d
Summary: Light Yagami did not exist by the time he died. A shadow had taken his place long before, and perhaps if those most important to him had noticed the change he could have been saved.


**I'm not sure what this is. It has no plot and no real reason behind writing it. It's also written very oddly, and I did not intend it to be, so I'm sorry. Please review, even if it's to tell me you hate it :)**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.**

 **WC**

The Shadow of Light

Light Yagami did not always have a darkness lurking inside him. There was a time when he was a happy child. A child who loved his family, and his home, and waking up every morning for the absolute purest reasons. There was a time when he read stories to his younger sister, and begged his father to go to the park _just_ so that he could try, again, to walk up the slide (surely if he practiced enough times he would be able to do it eventually). He delighted in the tiniest things, like sneakily stealing chocolate chips while his mother was baking, and then having her chase him around the house while they both laughed. Or trying to build card houses that his sister would knock over, and he'd pretend to be angry but really he could never be angry with his sibling because she was more precious to him than all the jewels in the world, and everyone knew that.

It isn't clear exactly when the idea of Kira began to worm its way into his subconscious. No one, not even his family, had even noticed he'd changed until it was much too late. Well, perhaps that's untrue. They'd all felt it, that he was different than he once was, but none of them really knew what it was. He studied just as hard, maybe even harder. He was still polite, well-mannered, undeniably kind, helpful, caring. He was still, seemingly, the same Light Yagami he had always been. However to those he was most important to, who knew him best, it was as if he'd lost something – as if something was missing and it made everything feel ever so slightly off kilter. Not quite balanced the way it was supposed to be. But it was an odd feeling, and none who experienced it knew what it was, or if it was even really there, or in their imagination, so all there was to do was ignore it.

That was a mistake. Perhaps if they'd payed only a little more attention, they could have done something. Or perhaps not. Perhaps nothing could have been done to change what the boy became. No one would ever know.

Surprisingly, or maybe it's not a surprise depending on the way you look at it, Sayu was the first to feel it. She hadn't meant to. Then again if she had she most likely never would have felt it in the first place, because that was the funny way things tended to work.

It was one unremarkable afternoon, and she'd been doodling flowers on the inside cover of one of Light's school books. When she was caught, as she should have suspected she would be, Light was annoyed. It struck her as strange because usually Light didn't get annoyed with her. He either got angry (if it was something serious), pretended to be angry, or (in most instances) was just the loving brother he always was. He'd once told her that he cared too much about her to get annoyed. He'd said that because his feelings towards her were so strong, he'd never be something as non-committal as annoyed with her. At the time she didn't really process it that way, it just struck her as odd. In fact, she'd assumed he was kidding, the way he usually was when he pretended to be angry. However his eyes no longer held the adoration and love that she'd gotten so used to seeing. In fact, it seemed to her that they didn't hold much of anything.

That was the first time she'd noticed it. Sayu soon forgot about it, and each time the feeling resurfaced she dismissed it without a second thought. Still, the day that she learned that Light had been killed, she was uneasy to find that it did not come as a terrible shock, as it should have. Instead, all she could think of was that same feeling, and she finally understood. Of course, she was never told directly what had happened, but she knew. It didn't matter though, because it was far too little, far too late.

Light's parents were a different story. It was not a specific event that led them to realize something had a changed inside their son. It was more gradual. He stopped asking for chocolate milk instead of orange juice with his breakfast. He stopped leaving letters on the refrigerator for his mother when he left for school – notes that said things like 'Have a good day!' or 'Don't forget to relax!' or 'As soon as I get home I demand a rematch!' for whatever board game they'd played the night before. He stopped telling his father bad jokes he'd thought up during the day. He stopped humming the batman theme song when he did his homework, and watching tv with Sayu, and leaving his door open when he went to bed.

Soichiro was the lucky one. He died before he ever had to accept the horrible truth that his son was a monster. Light's mother on the other hand, lived the rest of her life wondering. She would never speak it out loud, but there was a small part of her that couldn't quite believe that Light was the same man who had been her son by the time he died. She never knew, or even imagined really that he was Kira, but she could feel that he was no longer the Light Yagami she had raised and loved.

In the end though, it was the most important person who never recognized that Light had changed, and that was Light himself. He was too blinded by his desires and ambitions, too caught up in the game he and L played, and then he and Wammy's children, and in the idea that he was some kind of god who had the right to choose who lived and who died in the world. He never realized that he was far worse than any of the criminals he murdered. He was not even a man by the time Matsuda shot him, and he was certainly not a god. He was a twisted, evil, delusional shadow of the Light he had once been, and his time was up.

As he was dying, did he finally see? Did he finally understand what he had done, and who he had become? Did he have enough of a heart left to care?

No one can possibly know, nor will anyone ever know. The only thing that is certain is that the one who was killed in the end was not Light Yagami. No, Light Yagami was dead long before he ever stopped breathing.


End file.
